Most of the year, Coca-cola is made with high fructose corn syrup, due to the fact that it's cheap. However, it's also sickly, syrupy sweet. However, due to something called passover (involves Jews and some sort of revenge for an Egyptian e-mail scam or something), Jews can't consume anything made in an "artificial" process, so HFCS is out. So for a few brief, glorious weeks, you can get coke with real sugar in it:

(note the yellow cap, for easy identification)

"How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, 'This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed'? Instead they say, 'No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.'" - Carl Sagan

"To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection." - Henri Poincaré

"Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens."("Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.")-- Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805)Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.-- Philip K DickOK, now let's look at four dimensions on the blackboard.-- Dr. JoyEnglish isn't much of a language for swearing. When I studied Ancient Greek I was delighted to discover a single word - Rhaphanidosthai - which translates roughly as "Be thou thrust up the fundament with a radish for adultery."

You can thank Archer-Daniels-Midland Corporation, the biggest of the corrupt agricultural megacorps in USA that buy up equally corrupt congressmen to increase their quarterly profits. Congressmen are a good investment, apparently, because they can vote for subsidies and tariffs that knock out your competition. HFCS is made from subsidized USA corn that is turned into this metabolic poison that keeps the population sluggish and uncaring. Cane/beet sugar are mostly imported from Canada, Hawaii, and Latin America, so it's harder for them to buy congressmen to keep a free market.

ADM Corp is now running emotional "Don't worry, be happy," style TV ads to try to counter the scientific evidence that demonstrates the dangers of their food additive.

In case you didn't realize it, I DO have a sense of humor. How about you?"I will not fear. Fear is the mind-killer... I will face my fear. I will let it pass over and through me, and when it has gone, only I will remain." --The Bene Gesserit"Time is a spiral. Space is a curve. I know you get dizzy, but try not to lose your nerve." -- Neil Peart"I'm not in the ship. I am the ship." -- River Tam"The truth is simple. It's the lies that get complicated." -- me"No matter where you go, there you are." --Buckaroo Banzai

What are these dangers, exactly, and have they been shown to be attributable to the HFCS itself and not merely to the fact that people eat more of it because it's cheaper?

Maybe it doesn't taste as good as cane sugar, but is it actually more harmful? As far as I was aware it's actually a hair healthier, because there's slightly less glucose, which can be used by the body as-is, and slightly more fructose, which needs to be converted to glucose before it can be used.

Almighty Doer of Stuff wrote:What are these dangers, exactly, and have they been shown to be attributable to the HFCS itself and not merely to the fact that people eat more of it because it's cheaper?

Maybe it doesn't taste as good as cane sugar, but is it actually more harmful? As far as I was aware it's actually a hair healthier, because there's slightly less glucose, which can be used by the body as-is, and slightly more fructose, which needs to be converted to glucose before it can be used.

n the current study, Chi-Tang Ho, Ph.D., conducted chemical tests among 11 different carbonated soft drinks containing HFCS. He found 'astonishingly high' levels of reactive carbonyls in those beverages. These undesirable and highly-reactive compounds associated with "unbound" fructose and glucose molecules are believed to cause tissue damage, says Ho, a professor of food science at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. By contrast, reactive carbonyls are not present in table sugar, whose fructose and glucose components are "bound" and chemically stable, the researcher notes.

male rats given water sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup in addition to a standard diet of rat chow gained much more weight than male rats that received water sweetened with table sugar, or sucrose, in conjunction with the standard diet. The concentration of sugar in the sucrose solution was the same as is found in some commercial soft drinks, while the high-fructose corn syrup solution was half as concentrated as most sodas.

"How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, 'This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed'? Instead they say, 'No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.'" - Carl Sagan

"To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection." - Henri Poincaré

The study in that second link sounds methodologically flawed though. For the first experiment, rather than comparing the levels of sugar and HFCS to different brands of soda which may use greater or lesser levels, they should have simply used the same weight of each. As for the second, they compared bland food to bland food + sugar. OF COURSE the rats will get fatter on the latter. It's nonsense.

As for the first, so they proved some common HFCS sodas (the article doesn't specify which) contain carbon monoxide. They claim it's associated with the HFCS, but did they prove it? All it says they proved is that the sodas contained it, not that it was introduced alongside or produced as a result of the HFCS. The toxin could have easily been introduced as a result of the operation of faulty bottling machinery, or anywhere else along the line of the soda's production.

You're welcome. I try to be worth what I cost. Sometimes, repeating several hours of searches, presenting it with documentation, quotes, and edited tie-together text, explaining several angles of thought on the subject, and then spending several more hours re-researching and/or defending my conclusions to a potentially categorically skeptical audience is just more work than a given subject is worth to me. How about the short version?

HFCS is a crappy food ingredient from culinary, health, and safety points of view. The process by which it is created industrially and subsequently used is both dangerous and unappealing. The only real reason it is on the market is because big agro bought people off. None of this is a real secret. They just don't care. They don't have to. They are big.

In case you didn't realize it, I DO have a sense of humor. How about you?"I will not fear. Fear is the mind-killer... I will face my fear. I will let it pass over and through me, and when it has gone, only I will remain." --The Bene Gesserit"Time is a spiral. Space is a curve. I know you get dizzy, but try not to lose your nerve." -- Neil Peart"I'm not in the ship. I am the ship." -- River Tam"The truth is simple. It's the lies that get complicated." -- me"No matter where you go, there you are." --Buckaroo Banzai

Almighty Doer of Stuff wrote:As for the second, they compared bland food to bland food + sugar. OF COURSE the rats will get fatter on the latter. It's nonsense.

Ummm, no. They compared bland food + sugar to bland food + HFCS. And the HFCS diet produced bigger weight gains despite having a lower amount of sweetener than the the sucrose diet.

"How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, 'This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed'? Instead they say, 'No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.'" - Carl Sagan

"To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection." - Henri Poincaré

Well, excuse me, Arkaeon, for assuming the burden of proof was on the person making the claim. Perhaps I was unreasonable in reacting with annoyance when you treated me like an idiot when I had the nerve to ask you to back up what you said with the facts I assumed you had.

My field of expertise is not science, and I have no clue where or how to look to find scientific studies. I study computers, not nutritional science. If I make a claim, I try to be ready to back it up with facts and/or logic, or at least have some idea where to find the facts. If I make the mistake of saying something without knowing what I'm talking about, I freely admit it and apologize if someone calls me on it. Either way, I try to do so respectfully. I expect others to do the same, especially on a forum such as this where most of us come to learn from each other and gain a broader perspective than our regular lives, with limited time to pursue every interest we would like due to other obligations, would allow us to gain on our own. I don't come here expecting people to laugh at me because I don't know something, and I don't appreciate it. If you're going to laugh at me, at least let me know why you're laughing at me instead of just sneering. I understand that debates on this forum can get heated, but there's a difference between heat and acid.

And PKMKII, I stand corrected. I misread what that article said. Thank you for enlightening me.